


All of the Above

by BuzzCat



Series: Queerity Falls [3]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Bisexual Stan Pines, Gen, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26978197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuzzCat/pseuds/BuzzCat
Summary: Stan knew he was gay because he fucked guys, and he was straight because he fucked girls, but this didn’t seem like an all-of-the-above situation.Or, a decades long journey to finding the word that fits
Relationships: Jesus "Soos" Alzamirano Ramirez & Stan Pines, Jesus "Soos" Alzamirano Ramirez & Wendy Corduroy, Wendy Corduroy & Stan Pines
Series: Queerity Falls [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1106991
Comments: 10
Kudos: 88





	All of the Above

When Stan was 16, he kissed Carla McCorkle. It was a good one, a real smacker of a first kiss. Granted, technically she’d been the one to kiss him, and he’d been more than happy let her take the lead. All throughout their junior year, they’d drive to the parking lot where all the teenagers made out, sneak under the bleachers where he’d suck hickeys down her neck. Kissing Carla was great.

Kissing Carla was great because kissing Carla made sense, and when he brought her home one night (or rather, when his ma caught them making out on the front step and invited them both in for dinner), it had been to approving looks from his mother and a refreshing lack of commentary from his father. Ford had looked at little confused, when he bothered to look at all, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise.

When Stan was 28, he kissed Rod. Rod didn’t have a last name, at least not one Stan got to know. And Stan wasn’t even Stan then, he was 8-Ball Alcatraz. But he’d kissed Rod. Rod kissed different from Carla and all the other girls who had come before. Rod’s lips weren’t big and covered in sticky glitzy goo, but they were soft, and he kissed Stan like he meant to go on kissing Stan for a while. It felt good to have someone up against him, someone digging their hands in his back pockets and biting at Stan’s lip. Kissing Rod was great.

Great, until the next day when Stan was staring at a highway (a highway just for him, no one following, no one coming after him, a highway just for Stanley Pines), when he connected the dots that Rod was a man. Which, okay that had never been a point of confusion. But Rod was a man, and Stan had kissed him, which meant Stan had kissed a man. Which was fine, honestly. He didn’t have to worry about bringing home a guy (no home to bring him to, after all) and it wasn’t like he was keeping acquaintances around long enough to care what they thought of his lifestyle. It wasn’t the action that confused Stan, he just wasn’t sure what it made him.

Ford was always the one to get hung up on questions, to dig into why and how. Stan, he just liked doing stuff, and it was a lot easier to do something if he just knew how to ask for it, to say what he was and let that tell people what he wanted. He kissed girls, and he kissed guys, but it felt different kissing a girl from kissing a guy. And granted, there wasn’t a name for what it meant to kiss girls, that was just what you did when you were a man. But there had to be a name for kissing guys.

It was a year or so later, after Stan had kissed a few more guys and a lot more girls, when Stan first heard it. “ _Gay_ ”. Granted, it had been shouted at him in the kind of tone where even before he knew what it meant, Stan pulled his lips off Daniel only long enough to shout back, “Up yours, buddy!” But later, a few towns over and only after everyone around the table was a couple drinks in, Stan asked a couple guys in cool leather who seemed pretty nice.

The one with the slick hair leaned into the one with the bare chest, “It’s what we are. Guys who fuck guys.”

Huh.

“And uh, does that include fucking girls too?”

The one with the bare chest wrinkled his nose, “Not after you realize you’re gay. There’s gay, and there’s straight.”

Well, that put him ahead of where he was, but it still wasn’t right. Stan knew he was gay because he fucked guys, and he was straight because he fucked girls, but this didn’t seem like an all-of-the-above situation. As Stan drove, the Stanley Mobile eating up the highway beneath him and as the radio stations flicked in and out of reception, he eventually decided that was probably fine. Maybe no one else was like him, but that was fine. Fuck it. Wasn’t like he had to defend himself to the Fucking Police about whether he fucked girls or guys. What were they gonna do, stop him? If Ford had six fingers and wasn’t a freak, Stan could fuck girls and guys and not be a freak either.

So that was that. Settled.

And it was, for a long time. For a long damn time, Stan just decided he fucked whoever was down to party and whatever that made him, it was fine. Besides, after he drove to Gravity Falls, after Ford, after after after, he had significantly bigger problems.

But big problems, problems that go on for ~~one~~ ~~two~~ _three_ decades, they tended to be so big the rest of life leaked in around them.

It was Wendy and Soos, of all people, who clued him in. It was a long day at the Shack, Dipper and Mabel out chasing down gnomes or whatever they did in Gravity Falls when Stan was at work (they were fine, Dipper was smart and Mabel could punch and he and Ford had gotten into some weird shit and come out just fine, the kids were totally fine), when Stan happened to glance up from spray-painting rocks to see Soos and Wendy talking in the corner. Which, that wasn’t _abnormal_ or anything. But they were whispering. Stan didn’t even know Wendy _could_ whisper; she’d never cared enough if people heard what she said to bothering keeping it quiet.

Stan put the cap on the spraypaint and lumbered over. ‘Lumbered’. Heh. In a lumber town, last name Pines. He needed to be careful, wouldn’t want to be _cut down_.

Wow he needed new joke books.

“What are you kids whispering about?”

“Nothing.” Soos said it way too fast, fast enough Stan raised an eyebrow. The kid had never learned a poker face, no matter how long he watched Stan lie and cheat as a business all day long. Wendy, long since an accomplished liar, shrugged and leaned back,

“Just some drama from school.”

And honestly, Stan would have left it there. But Soos had tried to lie, and unless something was actively broken in the Shack, Soos never tried to lie. And if one of these kids was going to crack, it wasn’t Wendy, who now was meeting his gaze from her normal relaxed sprawl across the stool, but a calculating look in her eyes.

Stan looked at Soos. “Nothing? You wanna try that again, kid?”

Normally, this was when Soos would break down and admit that he’d broken a snow globe in the giftshop or mispriced a tshirt for under fifty bucks, or that someone had said something rude to him about his family (Soos always said it didn’t bother him, but Stan and Soos both felt better after Stan went over and smashed someone’s headlights with a baseball bat). _Normally,_ that was what happened.

What did _not_ normally happen was Soos fixing Stan with a look. Like he was weighing and measuring Stan, to see if he could be trusted. If he was worth being trusted. That look in Soos’s eyes put a cold shiver down Stan’s spine. Soos had been knee high to a grasshopper when Stan met him and not once had the kid questioned Stan, certainly never questioned whether he _trusted_ Stan (despite all the times he probably should have).

He looked at Wendy, and even though she still looked so casual, he could see the same look in her eye. That careful weighing of whether he was trustworthy on this. Wariness, like an animal about to cut and run if he so much as blinked wrong.

Stan didn’t think teenagers could scare him, nothing scared him (except for the basement, except for what was in the basement and what he was waiting to bring back into the basement). The silence had gone on too long and Stan was about to give it up as a lost cause, as something he’d done to convince them this was a secret they couldn’t share, when Soos finally cracked.

“There was a thing at the high school.”

“A thing? Like a fight?” Moses, was that all? He grinned, “Did either of you get it on tape?”

Soos shook his head, “Not that kind of thing, Mr. Pines.”

Stan frowned, “What kind of a thing?”

Soos hesitated, then turned to Wendy. Wendy lounged in her chair, that teenage nonchalance suddenly much less nonchalant, and looked Stan dead in the eye. “One of the freshmen at school got sent to the principal’s office because she was holding her girlfriend’s hand.”

Stan couldn’t stop a chuckle. “They’re in high school, and they got sent to the principal’s office for _holding hands_?” Hell, when he’d been in high school, they’d been full-on making out in the hallways and no one said shit.

“They got sent to the principal because they were _two_ _girls_. I’ve kissed a bunch of dudes at school, and I didn’t get sent to the office for any of that.” The kids still looked so tense, so nervous. And then it clicked.

They were afraid. They were afraid of Stan, afraid that Stan would say it was right the girls got in trouble, that it was unnatural for two girls to hold hands or kiss. In short, they were afraid Stan would regurgitate something like everything they’d ever heard from people who sneered at the rainbow flag in the window of the Corduroy home, like what Filibrick always said about the two “confirmed bachelors” who lived above the sandwich shop next door.

Stan bit back all the pain that these kids had been worried at all, and instead scoffed, “If two girls holding hands is what scandalizes the public these days, they shoulda seen what me and Jimmy Snakes were doing out in Reno.”

“Please don’t start telling gross old man stories, I’m not getting paid enough for that,” Wendy said, but there was a smile unfurling across her face, something like hope or the teenage version of “faith in humanity” seeming to lighten the weight on her shoulders. Soos wasn’t even subtle, letting out a big sigh and grinning. Yeesh, how bad did they think he was?

“You won’t be getting paid at all if I don’t start seeing some work around here, as opposed to lollygagging. Stop talking about the teenage lesbians holding hands and rearrange that display.”

“Actually, I think Emmy is bi,” Soos said. Stan frowned,

“Bi? What, like, leaving?”

“Bisexual. She likes girls and guys,” Wendy called over from where she was halfheartedly stacking mugs into a pyramid. “She was going out with some sophomore dude last week, dropped him in a heartbeat. It was all over the school…”

As Wendy and Soos went back to discussing high school drama—loudly, no more whispering and hoping Stan didn’t hear or wondering if he would judge—Stan found himself wandering back over to continue spray painting the rocks.

Bisexual.

Huh.

_Apparently_ , Stan thought as he slashed three tires of the principal’s car for giving those nice girls detention, _there is a word for me._


End file.
